![\"mohsen-rezaei-irgc-commander\"](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/mohsen-rezaei-irgc-commander.jpg\" "\\"mohsen-rezaei-irgc-commander\\"")
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On August 9, 2026, amid heightened regional conflict and deep systemic crises, the Iranian regime appointed Mohsen Rezaei<\/a> as the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC). Replacing Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr\u2014who resigned to become a political advisor to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei\u2014Rezaei was formally installed by the regime’s president Masoud Pezeshkian and directly named as\u00a0the Supreme Leader\u2019s representative<\/strong>\u00a0to the council. This elevates Rezaei to the center of Tehran\u2019s decision-making regarding war, regional proxies, and Rezaei is the founding commander of the regime\u2019s notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He is best known for sending tens of thousands of Iranian children to sweep minefields during the Iran-Iraq war and for orchestrating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which placed him on Interpol\u2019s wanted list. Before his current elevation, Rezaei served as Vice President for Economic Affairs<\/a> under Ebrahim Raisi and as the secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council starting in 1997. Despite a documented lack of economic expertise, he previously ran the regime’s “Economic War Room,” facilitating the IRGC’s plunder of national wealth through entities like the Khatam-ol-Anbiya Construction Headquarters.<\/p>\n His return to the helm of the security apparatus is a calculated move to consolidate hardline military control. State media has aggressively framed this leadership shift to project strength to a demoralized rank-and-file:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Before becoming Raisi\u2019s vice-president, Rezaei served as a\u00a0member and secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council since 1997<\/a>. He has run for president several times but has never been selected by the regime\u2019s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n His prior statements on economic affairs suggest that his role in the Raisi administration will include promoting terrorism as a means of securing the regime\u2019s interests. In June 2015, while world powers were finalizing the Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Rezaei threatened the US in a way that highlighted the regime\u2019s reliance on hostage-taking as a source of revenue<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the Americans want to have a bad eye on Iran and think of a military strike, they can be sure that we will capture at least 1,000 Americans in the first week, and then they will have to pay billions of dollars to free each of them. Then our economic problem may be solved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Rezaie has also promoted a ridiculous plan to improve Iran\u2019s economy by simply declaring that the value of Iran\u2019s inflation-damaged national currency is equivalent to the dollar and euro. Meanwhile, he has helped the IRGC to continue turning a tidy profit during the inflation crisis by serving as commander of the Khatam-ol-Anbiya Headquarters, the conglomerate that forms the center of the IRGC\u2019s financial empire, which reportedly accounts for the vast majority of Iran\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n On January 10, 2020, the US Department of the Treasury placed Rezaei on its sanctions list for his role in \u201cadvancing the regime\u2019s destabilizing objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the positions Rezaei has held in the regime include:<\/p>\n Sabzevar Rezaei Mir Ghaed, also known as Mohsen Rezaei, was born on September 1, 1954, in the city of Masjed Soleiman into a religious family belonging to the Bakhtiari tribe<\/span>. Rezaei went to Tehran in 1975 to study mechanics, and later pursued economics after the Iran-Iraq war and established connections with a religious group called Mansourun. He and several other members of the group formed the Mojahedin Organization of the Islamic Revolution to confront the People\u2019s Mojahedin Organization of Iran<\/a> (PMOI\/MEK) after the 1979 Revolution.<\/span><\/p>\n Rezaei was also a key element in the repression of the ethnic minorities, particularly Kurds, at the beginning of the revolution since he was one of the top IRGC commanders. Afterward, he and his ilk were active in suppressing and arresting dissidents, mainly MEK supporters.<\/p>\n After establishing the IRGC, he became a member of its Central Council and the commander of the IRGC\u2019s Intelligence, a position he kept for two years. In the first months of the Iran-Iraq war, then-Supreme Leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, appointed Rezaei as the IRGC\u2019s commander-in-chief. He served in that role from 1981 to 1997, during which time tens of thousands of children were used as \u201cone-time soldiers\u201d to sweep Iraqi minefields.<\/p>\n \u00a0 The Iranian regime prolonged the destructive Iran-Iraq war despite international outcry. The regime launched several offensives, known as Operation Karbala, which failed and resulted in thousands of Iranians dying.<\/p>\n Operation Karbala-4 was one of the deadliest failed offenses, carried out by the IRGC under Rezaei\u2019s command. Over 60,000 IRGC and Basij forces crossed the Shatt al-Arab north and south of Khorramshahr in dinghies and motorized seacrafts and immediately met the Iraq forces waiting for them. Yahya Rahim-Safavi, a former commander of the IRGC, acknowledged that Operation Karbala-4 \u201cresulted in at least 55,000 casualties among the IRGC and Basij forces.\u201d<\/p>\n The regime\u2019s official statistics identified 10,000 Iranians as killed or missing in Operation Karbala-4 and a further 7,000 in Karbala-5. Another 26,000 were listed as injured in those two operations. While the regime claimed and the suicide mission of the Operation Karbala 4 was to capture Iraqi territory, the real goal was to disrupt the Kuwait peace conference, as Khomeini wanted to continue the war.<\/p>\n In 2019, Rezaei acknowledged in a tweet that Operation Karbala 4 aimed to \u201cdeceive the enemy.\u201d This increased the regime\u2019s infighting and underlined how Rezaei and other officials sent thousands of Iranians to their deaths in an effort to achieve their own malign goals.<\/p>\n The notorious ward 209 of Evin Prison was controlled by the Revolutionary Guards before the formation of the Ministry of Intelligence. This ward has been used to torture dissidents, members, and supporters of political organizations such as the MEK.\u00a0As the IRGC\u2019s commander, Rezaei is responsible for the crimes committed in prisons.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter joining the IRGC, Mohsen Rezaei transformed the IRGC\u2019s Intelligence and research unit, which was supposed to be the IRGC\u2019s mastermind and planner and act as a maximum military intelligence unit for the IRGC, into a security organization. He also suggested during the war that the IRGC should have organizations to deal with the opposition,\u201d Mohsen Sazgara, one of the IRGC\u2019s first commanders, acknowledged.<\/p>\n Rezaei was instrumental in the 1990 evolution of the IRGC’s extraterritorial network into the Quds Force, subsequently appointing Ahmad Vahidi as its commander. Rezaei maintained a direct structural and operational relationship with Imad Mughniyeh (also known as Haj Radwan), who served as Hezbollah’s primary field commander. All of Mughniyeh’s extraterritorial operations, which included the 1983 Beirut bombings<\/a>, were executed under a chain of command that ultimately ended with Rezaei.<\/p>\n Under Rezaei\u2019s command, the IRGC actively engaged in assassinations abroad after the Iran-Iraq war, including that of the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, Sadegh Sharafkandi, at the Mykonos restaurant on September 17, 1992, in Berlin, Germany. Two other KDP leaders were also killed in the blast, along with a Red Cross worker. A German court later found that the Iranian regime was directly involved in the assassinations. A witness named Abolghasem Mesbahi, a former intelligence officer of the regime\u2019s Ministry of Intelligence was one of the main sources for the German prosecutor\u2019s office and identified the plot as having been ordered by Iran\u2019s \u201cSpecial Affairs Committee.\u201d<\/p>\n This committee obtained approval for the assassinations from Khamenei. The members of this committee were:<\/p>\n Under Rezaei\u2019s 16-year tenure, the IRGC played an active role in repression at home, founding and sponsoring foreign terrorist proxy groups throughout the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, and taking part in terrorist operations abroad, including the assassination of dissidents in Europe including in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany.<\/p>\n On July 18, 1994, a massive truck bomb outsid<\/span>e a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina killed 85 people and left more than 200 injured. The definitive decision to bomb the AMIA center was approved during a Supreme National Security Council meeting in Tehran on August 14, 1993<\/span>. During this specific meeting, Rezaei and Ahmad Vahidi<\/a> presented the operational feasibility of the attack and outlined the plan to use Hezbollah as the executive arm<\/span>. On August 10, 1994, shortly after the bombing, the Iranian Resistance held a press conference in Washington, D.C., to expose the Supreme National Security Council’s role in planning and organizing the attack<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n In 2006, Argentinian federal government prosecutors officially filed a lawsuit against the perpetrators of this attack, including Mohsen Rezaei and Ahmad Vahidi, who was then the commander of the IRGC\u2019s Quds Force. As a result, all perpetrators were placed on Interpol\u2019s wanted list. In 2013, Argentine Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman issued a 500-page supplemented indictment that reiterated the arrest warrants for Rezaei and six other regime officials<\/span>. <\/span><\/p>\n
\ndiplomacy.<\/p>\n\n
Fars News<\/a>:<\/b>\u00a0Brands Rezaei as a strategist for “hybrid and cognitive warfare,” emphasizing his wartime agility to reassure internal forces.<\/div>\n<\/li>\nTabnak:<\/b>\u00a0An outlet closely tied to Rezaei, Tabnak has revived<\/a> praise from deceased commanders to artificially bolster his military legitimacy, while broadcasting escalatory threats to signal deterrence.<\/div>\n<\/li>\nRaja News:<\/b>\u00a0Hardline factions have presented<\/a> the ousting of Zolghadr as a firm repudiation of conciliatory diplomacy, reinforcing the new Supreme Leader’s mandate for a strictly confrontational posture.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLatest Statements on War and Strategic Decisions<\/h3>\n
Rezaei\u2019s recent public statements reflect an explicit pivot away from diplomatic maneuvering toward open confrontation, prioritizing systemic survival over international integration. His role in the SNSC signals a continuation of policies that the Iranian Resistance has long identified as the regime\u2019s core survival tactics: domestic suppression and foreign terrorism.<\/div>\n\n
The Strait of Hormuz:<\/b>\u00a0Rezaei declared<\/a> on July 12, 2026, that Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is “more important than dozens of atomic bombs.” He warned that Iran would impose maritime usage fees on international vessels and explicitly threatened to target any foreign naval ships attempting to enforce an unauthorized shipping corridor.<\/div>\n<\/li>\nEnd of “War and Negotiation”:<\/b>\u00a0Asserting that the era of “simultaneous war and negotiation” is over, Rezaei has threatened that ongoing military pressure will push Iran into an “offensive and destructive phase.”<\/div>\n<\/li>\nExpanding the Conflict Zone:<\/b>\u00a0He has publicly warned that Iran is prepared to expand the theater of conflict beyond current borders, specifically threatening operations in the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean.<\/div>\n<\/li>\nHostage-Taking and Economic Redlines:<\/b>\u00a0Echoing his previous tenure\u2014where he suggested capturing 1,000 Americans<\/a> for billion-dollar ransoms to solve economic woes\u2014Rezaei has explicitly linked any future diplomatic de-escalation with Washington strictly to the unfreezing of billions in Iranian assets.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n“The Economic Mind”<\/h2>\n
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![\"mohsen-rezaei-irgc-commander-war\"](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/mohsen-rezaei-irgc-commander-war-1.jpg\" "\\"mohsen-rezaei-irgc-commander-war-1\\"")
<\/p>\nRezaei\u2019s role after the revolution and during the Iran-Iraq war<\/h3>\n
![\"iran-iraq-war-child-soldiers\"](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/iran-iraq-war-child-soldiers-200x300.jpg\" "\\"iran-iraq-war-child-soldiers\\"")
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<\/p>\nIran-Iraq War and Rezaei\u2019s war crime<\/h3>\n
![\"Mohsen_Rezai-Anis_Naqash-Mohammad_Saleh_al-Husseini-Mohsen_Rafiqdoust\"](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Mohsen_Rezai-Anis_Naqash-Mohammad_Saleh_al-Husseini-Mohsen_Rafiqdoust.jpg\" "\\"Mohsen_Rezai-Anis_Naqash-Mohammad_Saleh_al-Husseini-Mohsen_Rafiqdoust\\"")
Mohsen Rezaei\u2019s role in spreading terrorism and oppressing dissidents<\/h3>\n
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![\"AMIA-bombings-Argentina-1994-min\"](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/AMIA-bombings-Argentina-1994-min.jpg\" "\\"AMIA-bombings-Argentina-1994-min\\"")
<\/p>\nThe bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Mohsen Rezaei's remarks on Iran joining the FATF<\/div><\/div>